Current Research in Climate: Climate Feedbacks (ESS/OCEAN/ATMS 586)

The language of feedback analysis is ubiquitous in the climate sciences. Feedback analysis provides a formal framework for the quantification of how interdependent interactions affect the response of the climate system to an external forcing. Yet, much of the discussion of climate feedbacks in the literature ignores this framework and discusses feedbacks in a qualitative and haphazard fashion. This student led reading discussion will start with a brief introduction to the feedback analysis framework and continue by looking at how this framework is applied to the climate system. We will ask: what are the dominant feedbacks in the climate system? How well are these feedbacks quantified? Are there possibly unknown/unquantified feedbacks in the climate system? Weekly readings and discussions will be primarily chosen by and led by the students.